Social influence on metacognitive evaluations: The power of nonverbal cues

Metacognitive evaluations refer to the processes by which people assess their own cognitive operations with respect to their current goal. Little is known about whether this process is susceptible to social influence. Here we investigate whether nonverbal social signals spontaneously influence metacognitive evaluations. Participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice task, which was followed by a face randomly gazing towards or away from the response chosen by the participant. Participants then provided a metacognitive evaluation of their response by rating their confidence in their answer. In Experiment 1, the participants were told that the gaze direction was irrelevant to the task purpose and were advised to ignore it. The results revealed an effect of implicit social information on confidence ratings even though the gaze direction was random and therefore unreliable for task purposes. In addition, nonsocial cues (car) did not elicit this effect. In Experiment 2, the participants were led to believe that cue direction (face or car) reflected a previous participant's response to the same question—that is, the social information provided by the cue was made explicit, yet still objectively unreliable for the task. The results showed a similar social influence on confidence ratings, observed with both cues (car and face) but with an increased magnitude relative to Experiment 1. We additionally showed in Experiment 2 that social information impaired metacognitive accuracy. Together our results strongly suggest an involuntary susceptibility of metacognitive evaluations to nonverbal social information, even when it is implicit (Experiment 1) and unreliable (Experiments 1 and 2).     

Conflict's consequences: effects of social motives on postnegotiation creative and convergent group functioning and performance

Two studies tested the effects of social motives during negotiation on postnegotiation group performance. In both experiments, a prosocial or a proself motivation was induced, and participants negotiated in 3-person groups about a joint market. In Experiment 1, groups subsequently performed an advertisement task. Consistent with the authors' predictions, results showed that proself groups performed worse on the convergent aspects of this task but better on the divergent aspects than prosocial groups. In Experiment 2, the authors manipulated social motive and negotiation (negotiation vs. no negotiation), and groups performed a creativity task (requiring divergent performance) or a planning task (requiring convergent performance). Proself groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than prosocial groups on the creativity task, whereas prosocial groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than proself groups on the planning task, and these effects only occurred when the task was preceded by group negotiation.     

The Effect of Challenge and Threat Appraisals Under Evaluative Presence

Four studies were conducted to examine whether cognitive appraisals, manipulated through task instructions, would moderate social‐facilitation effects. In Study 1, participants in the challenge condition performed better on a mental arithmetic task when the experimenter was present. Conversely, participants in the threat condition performed worse when the experimenter was present. Study 2 extended these findings across 2 math tasks that varied in degree of difficulty. The pattern of performance data failed to support prior drive theories and provided support for a unique contribution of cognitive appraisals in explaining social‐facilitation effects. Study 3 validated the appraisal manipulations by using multiple measures of cognitive appraisals. Finally, Study 4 offered increased validity by replicating the performance data using an anagram task.     

The effects of interference and retention delay on temporal generalization performance

This study investigated the effect of forgetting of the standard duration on temporal discrimination in a generalization task. In two experiments, participants were given a temporal generalization task with or without a retention delay between the learning of the standard duration and the testing of the comparison durations. During this delay, they either performed or did not perform an interference task. Results failed to reveal any effect of 15-min and 24-h retention delays on time judgments (Experiment 1). However, when an interference task was performed during the 15-min delay (Experiment 2), there was a subjective shortening effect, indicating that the standard duration was judged shorter with than without an interference task. These findings suggest that when an interference task occurs immediately after initial temporal encoding, it affects the process of consolidation in reference memory.     

The influence of reminder trials on contextual interference effects

Two experiments investigated the proposition of the elaboration explanation for contextual interference that more than one task is present in working memory when multiple tasks are practiced in a random schedule but that only one task is present in working memory when multiple tasks are practiced in a blocked schedule. Three motor tasks were performed as fast as possible in either a random or blocked practice schedule. At the end of practice, a reminder trial for each task was either given or not given. Acquisition performance was slower for the random practice conditions than for the blocked practice conditions. Retention performance was faster for the random practice conditions than for the blocked practice condition that did not receive a reminder trial for each task. Importantly, performance differences were not found between the random practice conditions and the blocked practice condition that did receive a reminder trial for each task. A blocked practice condition with a beneficial acquisition and reminder task order pairing performed faster during both acquisition and retention than a comparable random practice condition. Reminder trials can facilitate detailing of task characteristics, and their effectiveness is determined by the elapsed time and number of intervening tasks during acquisition and retention.     

The Influence of Reminder Trials on Contextual Interference Effects

Two experiments investigated the proposition of the elaboration explanation for contextual interference that more than one task is present in working memory when multiple tasks are practiced in a random schedule but that only one task is present in working memory when multiple tasks are practiced in a blocked schedule. Three motor tasks were performed as fast as possible in either a random or blocked practice schedule. At the end of practice, a reminder trial for each task was either given or not given. Acquisition performance was slower for the random practice conditions than for the blocked practice conditions. Retention performance was faster for the random practice conditions than for the blocked practice condition that did not receive a reminder trial for each task. Importantly, performance differences were not found between the random practice conditions and the blocked practice condition that did receive a reminder trial for each task. A blocked practice condition with a beneficial acquisition and reminder task order pairing performed faster during both acquisition and retention than a comparable random practice condition. Reminder trials can facilitate detailing of task characteristics, and their effectiveness is determined by the elapsed time and number of intervening tasks during acquisition and retention.     

The cost of a voluntary task switch

Task-switching paradigms are widely used to study executive control. However, standard paradigms may not require active control to switch tasks. We examined voluntary task switching by having subjects choose which task to perform on a series of bivalent stimuli. Subjects performed parity or magnitude judgments on single digits. Instructions were to perform the two tasks equally often and in a random order. The response-to-stimulus interval (RSI) was either 100 or 1,000 ms, manipulated between blocks. Task alternations were slower than task repetitions, and this switch cost was greater at the short RSI than at the long RSI (310 and 94 ms, respectively). Additionally, subjects produced more task repetitions than expected if the tasks were performed in a random sequence. These results show costs associated with a voluntary task switch, when subjects must actively control the choice of the task to be performed.     

Electronic Performance Monitoring: A Laboratory Investigation of the Influence of Monitoring and Difficulty on Task Performance, Mood State, and Self-Reported Stress Levels

Increases in the sophistication of workplace computerization has provided modern-day managers with superior tools, such as electronic performance monitoring (EPM), with which to supervise their employees. Expanding on studies by Aiello (e. g., Aiello, 1993), the present study aimed to examine EPM in a social facilitation framework, exploring not only the relationship with task performance and stress, but also with an individual's subjective mood state. Thirty-three female and 15 male university students were required to solve a series of anagrams via a purpose-built computer program. Both the difficulty of the anagrams (easy or difficult) and the presence of monitoring (present or absent) were varied for each participant. Results indicated that the visual presence of EPM resulted in an easy task being performed with greater proficiency and a difficult task being performed with less proficiency. When participants were attempting to solve an easy task, the presence of EPM resulted in a participant's mood state becoming significantly more positive; whereas when solving a difficult task, EPM caused a more negative mood state. Similarly, it was found that a higher level of subjective stress was experienced when EPM was present, as opposed to absent. when individuals were performing a difficult task. The implications for the workplace applications produced by this study are discussed.     

Mental Representation of Familiar Others: The Impact of Occupation,Sex, and Race

The current study used a double primed semantic decision task to investigate the role of social group information in mental representations of familiar others. Extrapolating from social role theory, we predicted that social role information would facilitate responding to familiar targets regardless of the specific task at hand. The names of celebrities were used as stimuli, as people know them because of their social role (i.e., their occupation). Primes and targets were matched (or mismatched) on all combinations of sex, race, and occupation. Participants were randomly assigned to task condition: indicating whether the prime and target were (a) of the same sex or not, (b) of the same race or not, or (c) of the same occupation or not. Results indicated that participants responded faster to celebrity prime-target pairs that were matched on occupation regardless of task condition. In addition, participants responded faster to celebrity prime-target pairs that were matched on sex—but only when sex was relevant to the task. Similar findings were not found for race. The implications of these findings for understanding mental representations of familiar others and for person perception are discussed.     

How two share a task: corepresenting stimulus-response mappings

Previous research has shown that individuals unintentionally adjust their behavior to others by mimicking others' actions and by synchronizing their actions with others. This study investigated whether individuals form a representation of a coactor's task when the context does not require interpersonal coordination. Pairs of participants performed a reaction time (RT) task alongside each other, responding to 2 different dimensions of the same stimulus. Results showed that each actor's performance was influenced by the other's task. RTs on trials that required a response from both participants were slowed compared with trials that required only a response from 1 actor. Similar results were observed when each participant knew the other's task but could not observe the other's actions. These findings provide evidence that shared task representations are formed in social settings that do not require interpersonal coordination and emerge as a consequence of how a social situation is conceptualized.     

Satiation for social reinforcers: The effects of contingency,vicarious experience,and ambiguous situations

The relative satiation effect, an inverse relationship between the frequency of prior social reinforcement (the word “good”) and the later effectiveness of the social reinforcer in controlling behavior, was studied. In Experiment 1, a discrimination task in which social reinforcement was given for correct responses was administered to first- to fourth-grade children (6 to 10 years of age), who had during a preexposure phase performed a preliminary task or observed another child performing. During the preexposure phase, the experimenter delivered frequent or infrequent social reinforcement that was either contingent or noncontingent. Only performers and observers who had experienced frequent noncontingent reinforcement showed the satiation effect during the discrimination task phase. The results were interpreted as inconsistent with J. L. Gewirtz' (Developmental Psychology, 1969, 1, 2–13) social drive formulation but supportive of an informational analysis in which the children are seen as responding appropriately to unambiguous evidence concerning the reliability of contingency information. In Experiment 2, seating arrangements were varied so that information concerning the direction of reinforcement was made ambiguous. Performers were less responsive during the discrimination phase after experiencing frequent noncontingent reinforcement when seated alone or opposite an observer than when seated next to an observer. The results are interpreted as indicating trust of the reliability of the contingency under ambiguous conditions.     

Therapeutic social influence: sternly strike while the iron is hot

Two studies tested social influence options in symbolic modeling therapy. The first gave a pretreatment interview in which the therapist behaved in a “warm” or “businesslike” manner, and then urged the clients to approach a snake as closely as possible when (immediately afterward) they repeated a prior runway BAT and fear assessment. The “businesslike” group reported less fear than the “warm” group, but differential therapist perceptions did not affect overt avoidance. Study 2 compared directive social influence or its omission when clients performed approach immediately vs. the next week. The strongest BAT gains occurred if social influence was followed by prompt execution of the relevant task, but these differences were not maintained after treatment. The data suggested that timing is critical for applying social influence, which should be given immediately before task demands. Continued efforts to capitalize on initial differences might sustain socially-influenced gains for enduring treatment purposes.     

The effect of a teacher's presence on the classroom behavior of conduct-problem children

Six institutionalized conduct-problem children performed in a classroom under three reinforcement conditions: (1) noncontingent reinforcement: (2) reinforcement for being on task and (3) reinforcement for the accuracy and rate fo their academic behavior. Within each of these conditions, the teacher was either present throughout the class session or absent for a portion of the session. In the teacher's absence, on-task behavior was markedly reduced and disruption was markedly increased, regardless of the reinforcement condition in operation. In contrast, the teacher's absence had no effect on academic accuracy and had a major effect on academic rate only when reinforcement was delivered noncontingently. Furthermore, the extent to which the children became disruptive in the teacher's absence was reduced when reinforcement was contingent upon academic accuracy and rate, instead of being contingent upon being on task or delivered noncontingently. It is suggested that the reinforcement of academic behavior, rather than on-task behavior or classroom social behavior, not only will improve the latter behaviors as well, but possibly also make them less dependent upon the presence and continued surveillance of the teacher.     

Knowledge transfer between groups via personnel rotation: Effects of social identity and knowledge quality

The study examines the effects of social identity and knowledge quality on knowledge transfer across groups. One hundred and forty-four students performed a production task in three-person groups. Midway through the task, a member from a different group rotated into each group. The primary dependent variable was whether the group adopted the production routine of the rotating member. Analyses revealed the predicted main and interactive effects. Groups were more likely to adopt the routine of a rotator when they shared a superordinate social identity with that member than when they did not. Groups were also more likely to adopt a routine from a rotator when it was superior than when it was inferior to their own. Further, superordinate groups adopted the production routine of the rotator when it was superior but not inferior to their own, whereas groups that did not share a superordinate identity with the rotator generally did not adopt the rotator’s production routine, even when it was superior to their own and would have improved their performance.     

学龄前儿童社会善念理解的发展与心理理论的关系

本文探究了4~6岁儿童社会善念理解的发展及其与心理理论的关系。研究测量了100名4~6岁儿童的社会善念理解、心理理论、亲社会性和执行功能。结果发现, 随着年龄增长, 儿童愈加在社会评价和朋友偏好上倾向于社会善念人物, 并且此社会善念理解能力与心理理论的发展呈显著正相关, 且此相关在控制了年龄、执行功能及亲社会性后依然稳定存在, 但社会善念理解与亲社会性并不相关。此结果表明, 心理理论可能对社会善念理解的发展有重要作用。     

The cost of a strategy

Abstract

Experiment 1 demonstrated a new kind of dual-task interference effect. The primary task was a speeded left-right discrimination of stimulus position (R1). The un speeded secondary task consisted of reporting verbally whether the stimuli were the same or different (R2). Stimulus exposure time was either 150 or 2000 msec. Two groups of subjects performed the primary task only, whereas two other groups performed both tasks and were instructed to emit R1 before R2. It was reasoned that the decision would be made to emit R1 before R2, and that this decision would produce a lengthening of R1. The results supported this prediction. Experiment 2 showed that the interference effect also occurred when the subjects were not explicitly instructed to emit R1 before R2, and was not due to either the mere presence of the second task or to response grouping. Experiments 3 and 4 compared two possible models for explaining the interference effect, i.e. the capacity-sharing model and the postponement model. As predicted by the postponement model, task difficulty did not interact, or interacted underadditively, with task overlap (Experiment 3), and the interference effect was not influenced by the amount of processing resources devoted to the primary task (Experiment 4). It was concluded that this new type of interference effect is best explained by the version of the postponement model that locates the bottleneck at the decision stage.     

Effects of being observed on learning following success and failure experiences

In two experiments female subjects performed a task either alone or while being observed by a female experimenter, after which they were told that they had performed well or poorly. On a paired-associates (PA) learning task that followed, subjects who performed in the presence of the observing experimenter required more trials to criterion and committed more errors than those who worked alone only if they had supposedly done poorly on the preceding task. Subjects who had done well on the prior task performed better on the PA task when observed than when alone provided that the preliminary task had also measured verbal learning. A measure of skin conductance indicated increased arousal under conditions of observation on the PA task only after a poor performance on the preceding task. The results are discussed in terms of the drive theory of social facilitation and the conditions under which being observed produces evaluation apprehension.     

The renegotiation of social identities in response to a threat to self-evaluation maintenance

Two experiments examine the strategic re-negotiation of social identities as a method of alleviating threats to self-evaluation. Participants were given a partner who shared one, and had one non-shared identity. After completing a self-relevant or non-self-relevant task, participants received either no feedback or learned that they had performed poorly compared to the partner. Participants showed identity distancing in response to being outperformed on a self-relevant task, but affiliation in response to being outperformed on a non-self-relevant task. This effect was reversed when participants were given the opportunity to self-affirm after the feedback. Overall, the results provide evidence that individuals are quite adept at altering their self-categorizations and that self-evaluation serves an important role in identity selection. Results are discussed in relation to the substitutability of self-esteem maintenance mechanisms and self-definition.     

The effect of social observation on children's inhibitory control

This study examined the effects of social observation on young children's performance during an inhibitory control task. In Experiment 1, children were randomly assigned to either a neutral, facilitation, or interference condition. In the neutral condition, children were presented with a standard black/white task. In the facilitation and interference conditions, children were asked to observe the task performance of another person, who gave either correct (facilitation) or incorrect (interference) responses, and then complete the task themselves. The results revealed that the performance of children in the interference condition was worse than in the other two conditions, but the difference between the two other conditions was not significant. The results of Experiment 2 show that social observation did not facilitate inhibitory control in children. These results suggest that social observation interferes with but does not facilitate inhibitory control in children. Therefore, social observation may interfere with certain aspects of executive function.     

Pragmatic use of stereotyping in teamwork: social loafing and compensation as a function of inferred partner-situation fit

Using 4 experiments, the authors examined how stereotypic information about teammates influences social loafing and compensation during collective tasks. In each experiment, participants performed better on cognitive tasks when there was a poor (vs. good) fit between the stereotypic strengths of their partner and the requirements of the task. This pattern occurred whether participants used gender stereotypes (Experiment 1) or occupational stereotypes (Experiments 2 to 4) and occurred even when participants only anticipated working on a collective task (Experiment 4). In Experiment 3, the pattern occurred only in the collective (not in the coactive) condition, providing direct evidence for social loafing. Together, these results suggest that people use stereotypes to tune their motivation to optimize the ratio of their own individual effort to the team's expected output.